Toothbrush
nounA small brush with a handle, used for cleaning the teeth.
How to spell toothbrush
10 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce toothbrush
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does toothbrush mean?
- nounA small brush with a handle, used for cleaning the teeth.
Toothbrush in a sentence
-
He packed a spare toothbrush for the weekend trip.
-
Dentists recommend replacing your toothbrush every three months.
Where does toothbrush come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This is a transparent compound of two older English words: 'tooth', from the Old English tōþ, a native Germanic word for the hard structures in the mouth, and 'brush', which English borrowed from the Old French broisse, meaning a bundle of stiff bristles or twigs used for cleaning. The 'tooth' element traces back through Proto-Germanic to the same ancient root that gave Latin its dens (seen in 'dental') and Greek its odous (seen in 'orthodontist'), all of them describing teeth. The combined term appears in English from around the early 1600s, naming a small handled brush specifically for cleaning the teeth. Early versions used animal bristles set into bone handles, long before nylon and plastic took over. Because both halves are familiar everyday words, the only real spelling care is remembering the double 'o' in 'tooth' and the 'sh' ending of 'brush'.
How the word is built
- tooth (compound element from Old English tōþ)
- brush (from Old French broisse: bundle of bristles)
Fix your spelling for good.
Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.
Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.